Congress, Constitutional Law, Criminal law, International, Politics, Society

Is the United States Engaging In Unlawful Cyber Attacks Against Carriers of Wikileaks?

A day after Amazon was forced to block Wikileaks, the site is again offline in an alleged campaign by the United States to prevent the public from seeing the whistleblower material. This includes a disclosure, discussed last night on Countdown, that the Obama Administration has been misleading the public and actually moved to force Spain to drop its prosecution of American officials for war crimes and torture.

This is the third time that the public has found itself cut off from Wikileaks material. The question is whether the United States is attacking carriers — in this case, Everydns, which cut off Wikileaks at 3am GMT on Friday (10PM EST Thursday). Everydns complained that it did so to prevent its other 500,000 customers of being affected by the intense cyber attacks targeted at WikiLeaks. Wikileaks accuses the United States of the attacks.

An anonymous source has come forward to claim “credit” for cutting off public access to the material. Calling himself “Jester” and a “hackitvist for good,” the individual claims to be a former soldier. It is not clear if such a claim is to be believed or accepted at face value. Here you have someone bragging that he is serving “the good” by preventing other citizens from reading these disclosures on the alleged misconduct of their government. The claim will certainly not end speculation that the widespread problems are being directed or assisted by the government. Moreover, it would be interesting if any of these companies go to court to seek information on this individual as we have seen in recent cases where anonymous individuals have been forced into the open in litigation. It is also curious why the United States government is not using its oft-cited cyber units to find an individual who is allegedly causing such property damage and shutting down parts of the Internet.

The question is, if the allegation is true as many expects assume, what authority does the United States have in conducting dangerous attacks on private companies and endangering thousands of other sites? If the President can order such attacks without legal authority, the government could engage in an obvious form of restraint on free speech — targeting critics and whistleblowers. It would be the equivalent of stopping newspapers from publishing.

The disclosures from Wikileaks have been embarrassing for both Republican and Democrats in Congress — who have joined in calling for prosecution. The disclosures, once again, show the public has been intentionally misled on major policies and that Congress has continued to exercise no oversight in these areas. These disclosures constitute the most extensive record ever produced of how our government routinely misleads the public and engages in activities that conflict with our stated policies and values. It is an indictment of our political system — perhaps the greatest in history. It has led many to question whether our democracy is based a carefully constructed illusion of half-facts and outright lies — routinely denying citizens the true facts in major policy areas. The impression left by these documents is that we have a two-party monopoly that treats citizens as uneducated dolts who should be fed comforting and misleading information while the real actions of our government are confined to the power elite. On issues like torture, Obama has clearly misled the public in his blocking of any investigation into our torture program. He was first challenged before he actually took office when Bush officials revealed that (while campaigning against torture) he secretly promised Bush officials that no one would be prosecuted. We now know that, while claiming to be studying the issue, his Administration was threatening allies if they tried to enforce international law. Putting aside the merits of covering up for war crimes, the Wikileaks disclosure is the latest example of how our leaders now show little restraint in knowingly misleading the public like children who have little ability to understand or need to know the true facts behind U.S. policy. It is the modern version of bread-and-circus politics used by Roman emperors. This is a view that appears shared by leaders in both parties.

The result is that both Congress and the White House are embarrassed and eager to prevent public review of this material. However, there is little discussion of the legality of such cyber attacks directed against a whistleblower and claimed journalist.

What is equally striking is the relative mild reaction of mainstream media. If the New York Times had revealed the Obama Administration’s secret efforts to pressure the Spanish courts to drop its prosecution, it would have been viewed as a major investigative breakthrough. However, there is a discernible hostility in some coverage of Wikileaks and a reluctance to accept the site as either a whistleblowing or journalistic enterprise.

Source: Guardian

Jonathan Turley

84 thoughts on “Is the United States Engaging In Unlawful Cyber Attacks Against Carriers of Wikileaks?”

  1. Obama should take a page from JFK’s book:

    “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

  3. BIL, re: “The United States Federal Government is no longer a legitimate government.”
    —–

    I’ve felt that way since the appointment of the President in 2000 and the passage of HAVA mandating totally insecure, unverifiable, easily hackable electronic voting machines was, for me, the last nail in that coffin. Bah, Humbug.

    —-

    Thank you Professor for the great article and everyone that’s posted such a excellent dialogue- I got here late today but it’s been a pleasure to read the thread.

  4. Here’s the info Jill alluded to earlier- the government persists in claiming that all of them are classified when they are not, a bit of disinformation to scare people away and coerce students in reading the ‘forbidden’ text.
    ——-

    Key figures:

    15, 652 secret
    101,748 confidential
    133,887 unclassified

    Iraq most discussed country – 15,365 (Cables coming from Iraq – 6,677)
    Ankara, Turkey had most cables coming from it – 7,918
    From Secretary of State office – 8,017

    According to the US State Departments labeling system, the most frequent subjects discussed are:

    External political relations – 145,451
    Internal government affairs – 122,896
    Human rights – 55,211
    Economic Conditions – 49,044
    Terrorists and terrorism – 28,801
    UN security council – 6,532

  5. Blouise:

    Don’t worry about him, he is not a threat to the status quo.

    It’s Judge Andrew Napolitano the establishment worries about. The good judge is about to take down the whole fascist structure of the US government (on both sides of the aisle).

    And he is only two weeks into his new program (Freedom Watch) on Fox Business News (8 and 11 pm eastern time) weekdays. Fox Business channel is a separate channel from Fox News.

    Please don’t let that jade your opinion of the Judge. He is not perfect, but he is trying to stop the rise of fascism and lawless government in D.C.

  6. What! Our government unlawful? Impossible. They are as pure as the driven snow.

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

  7. I am not trying to be an alarmist but … I trust someone is seeing to the Prof’s safety and security.

  11. Anon Nurse, you highlight the very reason that era of State’s Secrets is just about over. The future will not allow you to base your fortunes on what can be so easily discredited.

    Those under 40 not only know this, they were raised on it.

  12. Spamheed

    “I find it hilarious that they continually attempt to focus their media machine on the breaches of secrecy and data theft rather than the fact that they have finally been rather publicly exposed as the deceiptful, self serving we have always believed them to be.”

    ===========

    Yes. Well said.

  14. I find it hilarious that they continually attempt to focus their media machine on the breaches of secrecy and data theft rather than the fact that they have finally been rather publicly exposed as the deceiptful, self serving we have always believed them to be.

    Whilst you may have the higher profile liars and crooks in government, you should be reassured by the fact that our own representatives in government, both UK and European are no less crooked or coniving and are as we speak endeavouring to close the gap

  15. My apologies to Otteray Scribe

    The previous three links use the ip address of your link. Though the ip address could change, I suppose…

  19. OK, looks like the Professor’s blog host recognized it as a link. All you have to do is click the blue highlighted link.

  20. culheath, you are spot on. I had the same thought, that if going after the banksters does not get him killed, nothing will.

    FYI: WikiLeaks is up on a new URL following the directed denial of service attacks. The files are being set up in their new digs, liked in my comment above. Copy and paste the following URL into your browser search bar.

    http://213.251.145.96/

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